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lovebaela · 1 year

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Ice & Fire ༄ Pt. 10 (Bran Stark x Targaryen oc fanfic)

⋇ Chapter 10: A Night in the Sky ⋇

(Imagine going on a dragon flying date with Bran 🌌)

┌─────── ∘°∘♡∘°∘ ───────┐

(a/n) I was listening to music as I wrote this and ocean drive was playing, it was such a vibe tbh😫. This is a pretty short chapter, I hope you enjoy! I already have the wedding chapter done so that might be published later tonight😉.

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Tsireya’s POV

As the months went by, the closer the wedding was approaching. I was happy, but I couldn’t help but be nervous. Overall, I knew that I would be happy as long as I was by Bran’s side and his by mine. Little Finger helped with the invitations, inviting the great houses of the North for the meeting.

That night, in my sleep, I dreamt of something horrible. I saw King’s Landing burning, the people were burning too. I was so stressed out, I visited Bran’s chamber and told him about it. “It was awful, Bran,” I told him.“Do you want to go on a walk?” He asked me, holding my hand. I agreed and we both dressed in warmer clothes before leaving.

We both walked out of the Winterfell gates and watched our dragons fly in the night sky. “They are such beautiful creatures,” I said. “Yeah, I still can’t believe they are back again, and that I was able to get an ice one,” Bran said. Suddenly, I had an idea, “let’s call them down here.” We both had the two dragons fly down to us. “You know,” I told Bran as I pet Dreamdancer, “We will need to learn to fly them.” “That is true,” Bran agreed, petting Snowstorm, “why not try right now?” Sure, they didn’t reach the average riding size yet, but they were still a bit bigger than a warhorse. Why not try?

We slowly mounted them and then looked at each other. “What are we supposed to grab on?” Bran asked. “Anything we can grab, I guess,” I replied. I took a deep breath and then commanded, “alright, bē!” Both dragons took off immediately, startling the both of us. We quickly held onto them tighter, not wanting to fall off. They were going pretty fast, but after a while we started to get used to it. We kept going up until we were above the clouds. “Wow, it’s beautiful up here,” I said.

“Yes, beautiful,” Bran said, smiling. We both took a moment to stare at the moon as it shined so bright in the night sky.

He smirked and then said, “Eat our dust!” He swiftly took off with Snowstorm. “Hey!” I laughed, flying after him. We quickly caught up with them. “You cheater, we weren’t ready!” I yelled, “try catching up with us!” Dreamdancer sped up, screeching. The two dragons were quite competitive with each other, so they enjoyed this game. Just feeling the wind blowing through my hair was so liberating and comforting. I laughed and whooped as we picked up the speed. Snowstorm caught up with Dreamdancer, side by side. I didn’t notice Bran staring at me.

Bran’s POV

I love seeing Tsireya like this. Happy, free, and more of herself. Just seeing this side of her made me fall for her even more. She looked over at me, noticing my stare and giggled. I smirked and removed my hands from Snowstorm, challenging her. At first she gasped but then laughed saying, “you’re crazy!”She signaled Dreamdancer to fly up higher. I wonder what she was planning to do.

Dreamdancer starts doing back flips in the air, making Tsireya go upside down a few times. Snowstorm flies up to Dreamdancer and they begin to playfully circle each other, as if they were dancing. They are such polar opposites, yet they go together so well, they complete each other.

Once the dragons stopped, we both flew down lower and started exploring. At first we saw nothing but snow until we saw something. “What is that?” Tsireya asked. “I think it’s a waterfall!” I replied. We have the dragons fly down to the ground by the waterfall.

“Wow,” Tsireya said, in awe. She turned to me saying, “I wish it could be like this forever, me, you, and our dragons. Living happily and exploring.” I smiled, walking closer to her, “I wish so too.”

I wrapped one arm around her waist to pull her closer and played with her hair with my other hand. I looked deeply into her alluring brown eyes, “Avy jorrāelan…” she smiles back at me replying, “Avy jorrāelan tolī, jorrāelagon hen ñuha ābrar.. (I love you too, love of my life)” our lips connected with much passion.

I loved her kisses, they make me feel safe and sound. She opened her mouth more, allowing my tongue to enter it. She tasted very sweet. She began to moan my name as I explored her mouth. Hearing her say my name like that made me excited and weak in the knees, but we had to contain ourselves though, for the wedding was coming soon. It made me remember what my father told me, about marriage.

“You will wed a woman one day,” father said. I gagged, making him chuckle. “You could have a girl of your choice,” he told me. “Do you know what marriage means?” He asked me. I thought about it for a moment, “When you say your vows upon the gods?” He nodded, “yes, but most importantly, you are promising and giving yourself to your significant other and them to you. You both will join together, becoming one. You will love them from your first day to the end of your days. It is a union that should never be broken..” “And you said I could pick someone?” I asked him. “Aye,” he replied. I glanced over at Tsireya. That made me wonder, if I picked Tsireya, would she have picked me too? Father smiled at me, “and I’m sure she would gladly wed you too.”

Once we wed, we will belong to each other and join together, finally becoming one. That made me think about children, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start a family.

I don’t know how long we made out for, but I didn’t want to stop, neither did she. We were again interrupted by the dragons as they hissed, embarrassed by watching us. I lick my lips and chuckle, “we should get back, before anyone freaks out and sends a search party.” “Yeah let’s go,” she agreed. We both mounted the dragons and raced our way back to Winterfell.

As we were flying, Tsireya yelled, “hey, watch this!” She looked down at Dreamdancer, petting her and then commanded, “Drakarys!” Dreamdancer looked up and blasted beautiful, blue flames. I look at Snowstorm and yell, “well, watch this! Suvion!” Snowstorm shot out a cold and icy gust of breath. We both laugh as we continue to fly home.

They dropped us off in front of the gates and flew off together. “I’d probably be best if we had saddles made for the dragons,” I suggested, she agreed. “And we will have less of a chance of falling off.”

“We should make this a thing,” I told her, “going on flying date nights.” She smirked agreeing, “I’d like that…”

Tsireya’s POV

We both went back into our separate rooms to change back into our night clothes. Once I finished changing, I went back to his room. “Can I sleep in here with you?” I asked, blushing. “Oh,” Bran said, blushing harder, “sure, if it’ll help you sleep better.” I blew out the candle next to his bed and climbed in with him.

“Bran,” I said, breaking the comfortable silence, “what if…the people won’t accept me, as their queen? They accepted me before because I looked…well more like them. Now, I look more like my mother, a Summer Islander…”

“Then they’ll have to deal with me,” he replied, taking my hand. “But you shouldn’t let them get to you, they just don’t like things they aren’t used to.

“Would you have liked me more if I looked the way I did when I was younger?” I asked.

Bran looked offended, “I can’t believe you’d ask me that, Tsireya. Nyke jorrāelatan ao pār, se nyke iēdrosa jorrāelagon ao sir. Aōha ñelly gaomas daor nūmāzma mirros naejot ñuha jorrāelagon syt ao. Lo gaomis daor hae ao kesrio syt hen aōha gevie ñelly pār issa pōja loss. (I loved you then, and I still love you now. Your skin does not mean anything to my love for you. If they do not like you because of your beautiful skin then it is their loss)”

I nodded him a thank you, smiling. That made me feel a lot better about myself.

“They will soon learn how much of a lovable person you are.”

He kissed my hand. I’m starting to think that our way of comforting each other is by touching hands.

“Thank you,” I replied, grinning. He always knew how to make me feel better. I kissed his cheek, “good night.” When I closed my eyes, I wasn’t afraid anymore.

We needed that, a night out with just us and our dragons. That will likely go down as my favorite moment with them.

┈┈┈┈﹤୨♡୧﹥ ┈┈┈┈

Taglist: @icarusignite

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 11 months

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First Observation of a Polar Cyclone on Uranus Scientists used ground-based telescopes to get unprecedented views, thanks to the giant planet’s position in its long orbit around the Sun. For the first time, NASA scientists have strong evidence of a polar cyclone on Uranus. By examining radio waves emitted from the ice giant, they detected the phenomenon at the planet’s north pole. The findings confirm a broad truth about all planets with substantial atmospheres in our solar system: Whether the planets are composed mainly of rock or gas, their atmospheres show signs of a swirling vortex at the poles. Scientists have long known that Uranus’ south pole has a swirling feature. NASA’s Voyager 2 imaging of methane cloud tops there showed winds at the polar center spinning faster than over the rest of the pole. Voyager’s infrared measurements observed no temperature changes, but the new findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, do. Using huge radio antenna dishes of the Very Large Array in New Mexico, they peered below the ice giant’s clouds, determining that the circulating air at the north pole seems to be warmer and drier – the hallmarks of a strong cyclone. Collected in 2015, 2021, and 2022, the observations went deeper into Uranus’ atmosphere than any before. “These observations tell us a lot more about the story of Uranus. It’s a much more dynamic world than you might think,” said lead author Alex Akins of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It isn’t just a plain blue ball of gas. There’s a lot happening under the hood.” Uranus is showing off more these days, thanks to the planet’s position in orbit. It’s a long haul around the solar system for this outer planet, taking 84 years to complete a full lap, and for the last few decades the poles weren’t pointed toward Earth. Since about 2015, scientists have had a better view and have been able to look deeper into the polar atmosphere. Ingredients for a Cyclone The cyclone on Uranus, compactly shaped with warm and dry air at its core, is much like those spotted by NASA’s Cassini at Saturn. With the new findings, cyclones (which rotate in the same direction their planet rotates) or anti-cyclones (which rotate in the opposite direction) have now been identified at the poles on every planet in our solar system except for Mercury, which has no substantial atmosphere. But unlike hurricanes on Earth, cyclones on Uranus and Saturn aren’t formed over water (neither planet is known to have liquid water), and they don’t drift; they’re locked at the poles. Researchers will be watching closely to see how this newly discovered Uranus cyclone evolves in the coming years. “Does the warm core we observed represent the same high-speed circulation seen by Voyager?” Akins asked. “Or are there stacked cyclones in Uranus’ atmosphere? The fact that we’re still finding out such simple things about how Uranus’ atmosphere works really gets me excited to find out more about this mysterious planet.” The National Academies’ 2023 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey prioritized exploring Uranus. In preparation for such a mission, planetary scientists are focused on bolstering their knowledge about the mysterious ice giant’s system.

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #news #nasa #uranus

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ammg-old2 · 11 months

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In the fall of 1819, William Edward Parry and his crew prepared to spend the winter in the Canadian Arctic. For this team of British explorers, the unforgiving cold and round-the-clock darkness were obstacles to be overcome in their search for the Northwest Passage. Looking out across the flat, treeless expanse of ice and fog, the barren landscape must have seemed wholly inhospitable. “It was a novelty to us,” he later wrote in the account of the expedition, “to see any living animal in this desolate spot.”

From Parry’s accounts, and those of other travelers, scientists built a picture of the polar night as a period of Arctic dormancy, an extended slumber in the endless twilight—when all but the hardiest of life either fled for warmer climes, or hunkered down to wait for the Sun to return. But now, researchers are discovering that the explorers had it all wrong.

A pair of new papers describing the latest discoveries reveals that the Arctic night is far from desolate: it’s alive with activity. It’s a time when microbes and animals feed, grow, and reproduce in the polar ocean, with special adaptations allowing them to thrive in the dark.

Many Arctic creatures have evolved to make use of light that is invisible to the human eye. Meanwhile, “an astonishing number” have developed bioluminescence, says Jørgen Berge, lead author of both new studies. Others live by moonlight, or by the soft red and green glow of the aurora borealis.

Berge, a marine biologist with UiT The Arctic University of Norway, is no stranger to life above the Arctic Circle. Berge has spent 13 years studying zooplankton in Svalbard, a group of mountainous, ice-covered islands far off the northern coast of Norway. Yet while cruising around a fjord in January 2012, he leaned over the side of his small boat, peered into the water, and saw something new.

“I saw a fantastic cosmos of blue-green light in the middle of the fjord,” Berge says. “That’s when I decided we needed to study the polar night.”

Berge and his colleagues have since discovered algae that grow without normal sunlight, and zooplankton that maintain their circadian cycles even without the Sun’s cues. And with these minuscule organisms forming the base of the food chain, larger organisms have adapted to prey on them.

Berge found healthy seabirds in winter with stomachs full of krill and Calanus glacialis, a fat-rich copepod that he calls the “avocado of the ocean.” How the birds located their prey in the dark remains a mystery, but he suspects that they spot the planktons’ faint bioluminescence.

Iceland scallops, meanwhile, can detect enough ambient light from the weak glow of the sun over the horizon to swim and feed on a summer-like schedule. “For me, seeing the bivalves grow through the polar night was the most surprising,” says biologist William G. Ambrose, Jr., a coauthor of the Current Biology study.

Life in the polar night is “far more active than we ever thought,” says Carin Ashjian, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who was not involved with the new papers. “This is a paradigm shift.”

Now, researchers are working to determine if the burgeoning life they see is common across the Arctic, or if it’s an abundance particular to Svalbard. Then, they’ll need to figure out the whys and hows. “It appears you can’t understand the system fully by just focusing on the period of time when the Sun is up,” Ambrose says wryly.

But the rapid onset of polar warming, driven by anthropogenic climate change, means that the time for discovery may be running out. “We need to first understand the processes currently occurring. We call this the baseline,” says Kim S. Last, who worked on both of the new papers. “Without a baseline we have no way of assessing change in the biological system.”

Like the old explorers, scientists still have much to learn about what goes on when the Sun goes down.

“We have lifted the curtain on the darkness,” Berge says, “and now we’re watching the active players on stage.”

#science #ecology #biology #marine biology #zoology #ornithology #meteorology #arctic circle #norway #svalbard #arctic ref

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rxsafetyglasses · 3 months

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Opening Day Ready: The Ultimate Guide to Prescription Fishing Glasses for the Perfect Catch

When it comes to fishing, you're likely familiar with the wide range of gear available to enhance your time on the water. Among these essentials, fishing sunglasses are standout pieces for any angler. Prescription Fishing Sunglasses aren't just accessories

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#Fishing Glasses for the Perfect Catch

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lindsaystravelblogs3 · 3 months

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Days 108 to 110 10-12 September

Day 108 10 September

A mystery day! We were at sea in the morning with lectures and more citizen science but after lunch we were at Edinburgh Island – and I have absolutely no recollection of it at all. Heather went ashore and one of her photos shows what looks a bit like my hand with my signet ring at the edge, but I don’t have a single photo from the day, so I am pretty sure I didn’t accompany her ashore. Having said that, I have a vague recollection of arriving on shore one day, only to find my camera battery flat and both my spares still on the ship, so who knows? Alas, I don’t think we will ever know for sure – just another lost day out of my strange life. A few of Heather’s photos look quite familiar – landscapes very similar to those we saw quite often – but others that obviously were significant to her but are completely unfamiliar to me.

Day 109 11 September

Back to reality. I enjoyed some of time a couple of days ago on my own at Cambridge Bay – or should I call it Painbridge Bay? But I think today was probably the best day of the trip for me.

Today, we were at Port Epworth where it was a few degrees warmer than it had been over the past week or so and our shore excursion promised much. We were promised some stromatolites and we saw plenty – many more, and looking quite a bit different from, those we have seen in a few places in Western Australia. Stromatolites are very ancient colonies of microscopic cyanobacteria, thought to be one of the earliest forerunners of life on earth, that have eventually formed into beds of (usually) circular rocks.

Almost as soon as we alighted from our zodiacs, we came across a ridge of rock with dozens of examples and our cameras ran hot – but much larger areas and more defined examples were seen a little later in the morning. We broke up into three groups – long hikers, short hikers and the much-maligned beachcombers. With my hips, I couldn’t contemplate anything other than beachcombing and only one other woman chose to join this group. Of course, we still needed a guide with a gun in case a polar bear came searching for his/her lunch – and we were allocated our chief naturalist: the guy I spent most time with anyway. It ended up with just the three of us (joined late in the morning by one of the other guides) exploring a wonderful stretch of coast and a nearby island.

First up, there was a call to ‘come quick’ because someone had seen some birds – a groups of about eight Willow Ptarmigans, an exceptionally secretive species that allowed us to get to within about five metres of them while they scratched around in the undergrowth, and although photography was challenging, we all got acceptable pics. The long hikers later spotted a Rock Ptarmigan, and the short hikers got a glimpse of a White-tailed Ptarmigan, both at extreme distance, but the Willow beauties were almost running around our feet. It was certainly a big thrill for me and even for Pierre, my favourite naturalist.

Next came a huge flood of Snow Buntings, a few hundred of them flying south, all around us over half an hour or so – only to fly back again a little later in the morning. We saw quite a few other birds, several that we had not seen previously on this trip – as well as a couple of active nests on rocks close inshore. My hips were causing quite a bit of pain so I chose to sit on some rocks for a while and let the birds come to me – and they did. What a wonderful morning!! We were walking in a very boggy area with many very small ponds between the reeds and we surprised a few more waterbirds as we walked along. The flora was also quite spectacular – not that I recognised much, but had Heather come out with us, she would have had a field day. I took lots of photos and took them back to her and some of them ended up on the ship list of species seen on the expedition. (In retrospect, most but not all, of the photos I took for her were of the same species she photographed on my lost day when she was on Edinburgh Island yesterday.)

We also saw a few ground squirrels – very cute little rodents that poked their heads up for photos from time to time. I love all squirrels and these were especially cute.

The guide who joined us late in the morning was one of the Inuit guides and we found ourselves in an area with quite a lot of jetsam and other discarded rubbish along the littoral. Between us, we collected dozens of items and piled them on the beach for removal back to the ship for proper disposal – but I think it may have all been for nought. One of the other guides said we weren’t allowed to take anything from the land back on board (despite us having done it – and been encouraged to do it – on numerous occasions on this and previous trips) and despite making a few unanswered enquiries, I suspect he prevented it from being disposed of in a proper manner.

All up, it was a wonderful morning. We had another landing close by along the coast in the afternoon. It was quite similar to the morning’s meanderings but there were more people in the group, and it held little of the magic I experienced in the morning. The morning landing was an unusually long one while the afternoon one was quite short, but overall, I rate the day as probably the best of the expedition.

Late in the afternoon, the ship positioned into a very calm cove where a few (very few) hardy souls did the tame (very tame) Polar Plunge. Having done it ourselves, in both the north and south polar regions, in more extreme conditions than existed today, (and before the ultra risk-averse namby-pamby conditions were implemented - who needs a safety harness and extraction rope when we can simply swim back to the ladder and our waiting shot of vodka?), we didn't feel we needed to risk exacerbating our sniffles by doing it again. We didn't have anything to prove - least of all to ourselves!

Day 110 12 September

Today, we were in the Dolphin and Union Strait – sailing up and back, up and back, for over 24 hours to avoid the gale-force winds outside the main Strait. It was simply a holding pattern while we waited for the winds to abate so we spent all day in lectures, citizen science – and, of course, eating and drinking. The scenery was interesting but after a while, repetition got the better of us and we started to ignore it.

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edithcrawleygirl · 5 months

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Best Sunglasses lens color for MTB

Introduction

As you gear up for the exhilarating world of mountain biking, there's more to consider than just the trail ahead. Your choice of sunglass lens color can significantly impact your overall biking experience, from enhancing visibility to protecting your eyes from the elements. Join us as we explore the vibrant spectrum of lens colors and unveil the ideal shades for your MTB adventures.

Factors Influencing Lens Color Choice

Lighting Conditions

The lighting conditions on a mountain trail can vary significantly. From shaded forests to open, sunlit paths, choosing a lens color that adapts to these changes is vital.

Trail Type and Terrain

Different trails pose different challenges. Dusty, rocky terrains might require a different lens color compared to lush, tree-covered paths. Matching your lens color to the terrain enhances visibility and safety.

Personal Preference

Ultimately, personal comfort and preference play a significant role. Some riders prefer a warmer tint, while others opt for a neutral shade. Understanding your preference ensures a more enjoyable ride.

Best Sunglass Lens Colors for MTB

Clear or Light Yellow Lenses

Ideal for low-light conditions, clear or light yellow lenses enhance contrast, making obstacles more visible in dimly lit environments.

Rose or Copper Tinted Lenses

Excellent for overcast days, rose or copper tinted lenses provide better depth perception and enhance visibility in varying light conditions.

Smoke or Gray Lenses

A versatile choice, smoke or gray lenses offer natural color perception and are suitable for bright, sunny days on open trails.

Green Lenses

Green lenses are perfect for mixed light conditions. They provide excellent contrast and reduce glare, making them a versatile choice for various terrains.

Special Considerations for Different Conditions

Low Light and Overcast Conditions

In low light or overcast conditions, prioritize lenses with high contrast like yellow or rose to improve visibility.

Bright Sunny Days

Opt for darker lenses like gray or smoke on bright, sunny days to reduce glare and protect your eyes from intense sunlight.

Mixed Light Conditions

Green lenses work well in mixed light conditions, providing a balanced contrast for both shaded and sunlit areas.

Lens Coatings and Their Impact

Anti-Reflective Coating

Reduces glare and reflections, enhancing clarity and comfort during rides.

Polarized Coating

Minimizes glare from reflective surfaces like water or snow, improving overall visibility.

Mirrored Coating

Reflects sunlight away from the eyes, reducing eye strain in bright conditions.

Choosing the Right Sunglasses for MTB

Frame Design and Fit

A secure and comfortable fit is crucial. Look for frames that offer stability during rapid movements.

Ventilation and Anti-fog Features

Opt for sunglasses with adequate ventilation to prevent fogging, ensuring a clear line of sight.

Durability and Impact Resistance

Given the unpredictable nature of mountain trails, choose sunglasses with durable frames and impact-resistant lenses.

Maintenance Tips for MTB Sunglasses

Cleaning and Storage

Regularly clean your lenses with a microfiber cloth and store your sunglasses in a protective case to prevent scratches.

Lens Replacement and Upkeep

Replace lenses if scratched or damaged to maintain optimal visibility. Check and tighten screws regularly for a secure fit.

Popular Sunglass Brands for MTB

Oakley

Known for their high-performance optics, Oakley offers a range of lens colors suitable for various MTB conditions.

Smith Optics

Smith Optics combines style with functionality, providing lenses that excel in different lighting scenarios.

100%

Specializing in eyewear for extreme sports, 100% offers durable and reliable sunglasses for MTB enthusiasts.

User Reviews and Experiences

Real-world experiences matter. Explore user reviews and gather insights from fellow MTB enthusiasts to understand how different lens colors perform in various scenarios.

Conclusion

In the dynamic realm of mountain biking, where each twist and turn presents a fresh challenge, the significance of choosing the right sunglass lens color cannot be emphasized enough. Consider MRY as an excellent choice for your lens needs, providing a diverse selection of replacement lenses compatible with the mentioned eyewear brands. As you gear up for your upcoming MTB adventure, recognize the transformative potential that MRY replacement lenses carry for your eyewear.

#oakley #sunglasses #football

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nasa · 3 years

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6 Ways NASA is Involved in Climate Science

When it comes to climate change, we play a unique role in observing and understanding changes to the planet. Thanks to NASA’s Earth observations and related research, we know our planet and its climate are changing profoundly. We also know human activities, like releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, are driving this change.

Not only do we make these observations, we help people and groups use this knowledge to benefit society. The work we do at NASA is critical to helping us understand the ways our planet is responding to increased temperatures.

Here are 6 ways that we are involved in climate science and informing decisions:

1. Monitoring Earth’s vital signs

Just like a doctor checks your vitals when you go in for a visit, here at NASA we are constantly monitoring Earth’s vital signs - carbon dioxide levels, global temperature, Arctic sea ice minimum, the ice sheets and sea level, and more.

We use satellites in space, observations from airplanes and ships, and data collected on the ground to understand our planet and its changing climate. Scientists also use computers to model and understand what's happening now and what might happen in the future.

People who study Earth see that the planet’s climate is getting warmer. Earth's temperature has gone up more than 1 degree Celsius (~2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last 100 years. This may not seem like much, but small changes in Earth's temperature can have big effects. The current warming trend is of particular significance, because it is predominantly the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and is proceeding at an unprecedented rate.

People drive cars. People heat and cool their houses. People cook food. All those things take energy. Human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible for warming our planet. Burning fossil fuels -- which includes coal, oil, and natural gas -- releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where they act like an insulating blanket and trap heat near Earth’s surface.

At NASA, we use satellites and instruments on board the International Space Station to confirm measurements of atmospheric carbon levels. They’ve been increasing much faster than any other time in history.

2. Tracking global land use and its impacts

We also monitor and track global land use. Currently, half the world's population lives in urban areas, and by 2025, the United Nations projects that number will rise to 60%.

With so many people living and moving to metropolitan areas, the scientific world recognizes the need to study and understand the impacts of urban growth both locally and globally.

The International Space Station helps with this effort to monitor Earth. Its position in low-Earth orbit provides variable views and lighting over more than 90% of the inhabited surface of Earth, a useful complement to sensor systems on satellites in higher-altitude polar orbits. This high-resolution imaging of land and sea allows tracking of urban and forest growth, monitoring of hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, documenting of melting glaciers and deforestation, understanding how agriculture may be impacted by water stress, and measuring carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

3. Research into the causes of climate change

Being able to monitor Earth’s climate from space also allows us to understand what’s driving these changes.

With the CERES instruments, which fly on multiple Earth satellites, our scientists measure the Earth’s planetary energy balance – the amount of energy Earth receives from the Sun and how much it radiates back to space. Over time, less energy being radiated back to space is evidence of an increase in Earth’s greenhouse effect. Human emissions of greenhouse gases are trapping more and more heat.

NASA scientists also use computer models to simulate changes in Earth’s climate as a result of human and natural drivers of temperature change.

These simulations show that human activities such as greenhouse gas emissions, along with natural factors, are necessary to simulate the changes in Earth’s climate that we have observed; natural forces alone can’t do so.

4. Research into the effects of climate change

Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers and ice sheets have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted, and trees are flowering sooner.

The effects of global climate change that scientists predicted are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.

Climate modelers have predicted that, as the planet warms, Earth will experience more severe heat waves and droughts, larger and more extreme wildfires, and longer and more intense hurricane seasons on average. The events of 2020 are consistent with what models have predicted: extreme climate events are more likely because of greenhouse gas emissions.

Plants are also struggling to keep up with rising carbon dioxide levels. Plants play a key role in mitigating climate change. The more carbon dioxide they absorb during photosynthesis, the less carbon dioxide remains trapped in the atmosphere where it can cause temperatures to rise. But scientists have identified an unsettling trend – 86% of land ecosystems globally are becoming progressively less efficient at absorbing the increasing levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Helping organizations to use all the data and knowledge NASA generates is another part of our job. We’ve helped South Dakota fight West Nile Virus, helped managers across the Western U.S. handle water, helped The Nature Conservancy protect land for shorebirds, and others. We also support developing countries as they work to address climate and other challenges through a 15-year partnership with the United States Agency for International Development.

5. Action on sustainability

Sustainability involves taking action now to enable a future where the environment and living conditions are protected and enhanced. We work with many government, nonprofit, and business partners to use our data and modeling to inform their decisions and actions. We are also working to advance technologies for more efficient flight, including hybrid-electric propulsion, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

These advances in research and technology will not only bring about positive changes to the climate and the world in which we live, but they will also drive the economic engine of America and our partners in industry, to remain the world-wide leader in flight development.

We partner with the private sector to facilitate the transfer of our research and NASA-developed technologies. Many innovations originally developed for use in the skies above help make life more sustainable on Earth. For example:

Our Earth-observing satellites help farmers produce more with less water.

Expertise in rocket engineering led to a technique that lessens the environmental impact of burning coal.

A fuel cell that runs equipment at oil wells reduces the need to vent greenhouse gases.

6. Applying climate research to preserve NASA centers in coastal areas

Sea level rise in the two-thirds of Earth covered by water may jeopardize up to two-thirds of NASA's infrastructure built within mere feet of sea level.

Some NASA centers and facilities are located in coastal real estate because the shoreline is a safer, less inhabited surrounding for launching rockets. But now these launch pads, laboratories, airfields, and testing facilities are potentially at risk because of sea level rise. We’ve worked internally at NASA to identify climate risks and support planning at our centers.

NASA Climate Science

Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing us today. It involves many dimensions – science, economics, society, politics, and moral and ethical questions – and is a global problem, felt on local scales, that will be around for decades and centuries to come. With our Eyes on the Earth and wealth of knowledge on the Earth’s climate system and its components, we are one of the world’s experts in climate science.

Visit our Climate site to explore and learn more.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

#Earth #Earth science #science #STEM #climate #climate science #climate change #NASA #sustainability #plants #enviornment

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ventiskies · 3 years

Text

When he rejects you | Chongyun, Scaramouche, Albedo

a/n: hello friends!! i apologize for my somewhat disappearance TwT im currently having exam season but i couldnt help but write something for my favorite three (and yes, scara is there... and honestly, I don't know when I started simping for him either but you can now call me a future scaramouche haver >:)) so not a request, but do enjoy !! <3 (apologies if there are any errors!!)

pairing: chongyun x gn! reader, scaramouche x gn! reader, albedo x gn! reader (platonic)

Chongyun

★ Chongyun, Xingqiu and you had been best friends since you were kids. And although you were a trio, you and Chongyun had always known each other much longer.

★ If your life were a book, it would be a sweet childhood best friends growing up together genre, something that often piqued Xingqiu’s interests when he drags the two of you to Wanwen bookhouse

★ The books you had borrowed from Xingqiu about them all ended with the same thing; that they end up becoming a couple and growing up together. Reminiscing about their childhood youth when they were old.

★ You knew not to trust the books or use them as a guide, but just like the books, you had grown to fall in love with the icy-haired boy.

★ Chongyun was like a breath of fresh air. His determination in exorcising ‘evil spirits' to the point that he blindly falls for Xingqiu and your pranks were the things that you loved about him. He was filled with enthusiasm and positivity (literally).

★ You grew into enjoying his positive attitude, you couldn't imagine a day going by without Chongyun telling you and Xingqiu about a so called 'haunted' place he had found, and forcing the two of you to come with him. and even if it had ended without meeting a single spirit, he would still be in high spirits.

★ you loved it, seeing the rush of thrill he feels whenever he senses a spirit nearby, hoping the spirit was able to withstand his excessive yang energy. the repeating days without one successful exorcism, only to end up getting treated to a meal by Xingqiu, and the parting that always ends with a promise to see each other the day after. Chongyun speaks his emotions, and you were in love with that.

★ and him, just in general.

★ And one day, you had decided to tell him just that

★ You were both on the hunt for Jueyun chilies for Xiangling, a small commission that you had decided to take on while waiting for Xingqiu to finish his work at the guild. The sun had set, and you had returned from Qingce village with a bucket full of the chilies and had decided to rest on top of the mountain where you had both Waypointed to just to admire the sunset.

★ In the heat of the moment, you had spoken.

“I like you, Chongyun,” you had said, looking at him with a smile.

★ You would have accepted a silence. You had expected it to be like the books; he would gently laugh and look at you, admitting that he had been waiting for you to say the exact words, lean in to kiss you. It would be awkward at first, but it’ll also be something to look back to in the future when kissing becomes something you do every day. You’d return back to Liyue Harbor hand in hand, and be able to tell Xingqiu and Xiangling that he was your boyfriend now, and admit to the former that maybe his books were right.

★ But instead, you were met with Chongyun’s wide eyes staring at you. His cheeks flushed red with what you had tried hard to hope was shyness, but had appealed more like panic. He had stood up and cleared his throat

“We- we should get back,” he says, too quickly for someone as calm as he is. And you knew it was a wrong step, “I’m-,” he clears his throat, “I’m going to go ahead first. I'm sorry,”

★ You didn’t know if he was apologizing for leaving early, or for not being able to accept your feelings, but when you hadn't seen him the following day, you could only assume.

Scaramouche

★ Honestly, you had it coming for you.

★ Scaramouche is someone whose life is their job. There was nothing that could distract him from working for the Tsaritsa

★ You had (been self-entitled) as his best friend. And honestly, if Scaramouche knew of it, he doesn't blame you. Everyone in the Fatui and who worked under the Fatui knew how close you were. Which was odd because, for one, you were absolutely nothing like him. Although you weren't exactly liked by everyone, you weren't loathed by everyone like the sixth harbinger was.

★ Scaramouche was feared by anyone who hears his name or walks a foot away from him, while you carried a calmer aura. Without glancing, Scaramouche could bring his subordinates trembling, while they would greet you when you pass by them.

★ You were polar opposites, and yet, everyone has seen the two of you together so much that when he wasn't with you or the other way around, people would assume you were on a solo mission or just leaving the other’s quarters

★ Of course, being his best friend, you weren’t spared of his usual harsh words. As a matter of fact, you probably had it much worse than anyone else. It had almost seemed as if every time he spoke, he spoke like he was trying to get rid of you.

★ But if that really were the case, then he hasn’t been trying his best. You had stayed with him since you had become an ally to the Fatui, and ever since then had stayed by his side. When others shake in fear, you shake your head with a laugh and a retort.

★ It had even come as a surprise to you when you had realized you had fallen for the harbinger. You would think that spending time with such a foul-mouthed person who would murder someone in the blink of an eye with no hesitation would make you dislike him. But that didn’t happen.

★ In fact, it was quite the opposite. You had fallen in love with him.

★ It wasn’t obvious to anyone, and even you had to take the time to squint to look for it. But Scaramouche did care for you in his own way. Whether it be toning down the harsh words when he sees your mood dampen after a mission, or beating the shit out of a person who had attacked you ruthlessly, not stopping even after his hands were covered in crimson liquid and the person almost certainly died. Even if he calls you a hindrance afterward for dirtying his hands, he definitely thought of you the same as you thought of him.

★ A friend.

★ Or, you had hoped, something more.

★ It was a mistake to take his slight kindness as a sign of him liking you, it truly was.

★ During your journey to Inazuma for a mission, you had decided to confess to him out of the blue. You knew he was someone who could predict the outcome of something even before you said anything, so a slow confession when the sun was setting in a field of flowers would just be a waste of time. if there was something you learned, it's to cut to the chase with him.

“Hey Scara,” you had said quietly. He had replied with a low hum, not turning back to look at you, “I like you.”

★ Without a second thought, Scaramouche had taken you by surprise as well.

★ He had not stopped in his tracks, instead, his shoulders shook in laugher. His laugh wasn't the same laugh you hear whenever you make a stupid mishap or get slightly injured during a simple mission- no, those laughs were warmer. Although laced with unkindness, they were more familiar.

★ This one was condescending. As if you were a new recruit again, having to work under him. As if all those years as friends had just gone down the drain.

“Stupid. What a fool of me to assume you were different.” he says, voice clear as a bell in the night, “don’t be an inconvenience. I don't have time for people like you.”

Albedo

★ Ever since working under Albedo with Sucrose, your life had been nothing but full of wonder. Although some were dangerous, Albedo and you bonded easily as if you had worked together in a past life.

★ Albedo was a genius. He was someone you looked up to, and sometime during your investigations, he had become a friend. You didn't know when it started. When it had gone from two alchemists staying the night in Dragonspine to observe the different stages of new plant growth, to- with the permission of the acting grandmaster - just two people, two friends, going out to explore the seven nations.

★ Sucrose and Timaeus had stayed back in Mondstadt to finish experiments that you both had decided to put on hold for your trip, and with nothing to worry about, the two of you had gone out with nothing but the protection of each other (and your visions, of course), and a few packed meals from Good Hunter.

★ Albedo had a side that no one saw unless they spent nights camping with him in the middle of nowhere. You were one of the lucky people who were able to see that side of his during your trips around the seven.

★ The alchemist wasn't just curious about the way the world works, he had also been curious with, well, you.

★ Some nights when he couldn't go to sleep (which was often. You’d be surprised to see how messed up his sleep schedule was), he would sit in front of the fire you had both worked hard to make, and simply talk.

★ sometimes, it would be short conversations. but more than often, you find yourself talking about everything and nothing until the sun rose above the mountains, and you would have to continue your journey until one of you (usually being you,) were too tired to continue.

★ Albedo talks with passion, no matter what the topic is. He could be talking about what you were going to be having for dinner for the next night before you reach the first region in your trip, and he would already have you captivated.

★ Albedo also talks with gentleness. And this was the said side not a lot of people would be able to see from the chief alchemist. Whenever the tent was filled with comforting silence, you would be able to hear Albedo asking you questions about yourself. They weren’t your standard, what was your dream growing up? Kind of questions, but they were more specific. More… personal.

★ Is it not funny, how life works? What if a single moment had changed in the past, I and you wouldn't have met. He would question, eyes trained to the flames burning in front of him. It sounded rhetorical, but his tone was laced with wonder. He sounds as if he was expecting an answer, but he doesn't urge you for one. And every time he does, you merely hum.

★ Albedo was gentle in everything he did. Almost all the time you were with him, he had never acted brashly. He was patient, kind.

★ and that was most likely what had prompted your crush on the alchemist

★ crushing on Albedo was like looking up at the stars. he was someone who shined brightly, but you knew he was too far to reach, yet despite that, you had still attempted to.

★ you had decided to finally let it all out on him the night of your final stay before you reached your final region, which was Inazuma.

★ and that, you had realized a little too late, had been the icing on top of a really terrible cake.

"Albedo," you had stared, and the alchemist immediately turned towards you. that was something you had grown fond of. you knew Albedo was a man married to his work, so when he turns to you in the midst of it, you felt your stomach churn in delight, "I have to tell you something,"

“Hm?” he hums, setting his notepad down to give you his full attention, “what is it, y/n?”

★ You took a deep breath, and the moment you had opened your mouth to tell him, you had a sinking feeling you had made a huge mistake.

“I like you, a lot,” you muttered, “not just platonically, Albedo. I… I think you're really interesting. and if you'd like, I would love to be with you. ”

★ Albedo’s face had fallen, and although it had been the slightest, you had still noticed it. He looked at you as if the cogs were turning in his brain, and finally, he looks down

“I must apologize,” he starts, and you feel your stomach drop, “but I’m not interested in you that way, y/n. If it makes you feel better, I see you as a very dear friend,”

★ You nod, apologizing to Albedo before he offers a small smile before continuing his research

★ You both did not speak of it, but there was a very thick air of silence hangs over the two of you afterward, that didn't dissipate even after you both left the camp.

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random-thought-depository · 3 years

Text

Continuing from my last post about science fictional “hyperspaces” (wow, I think that might be the most viral original post I ever wrote; it’s amazing what being reblogged by @argumate can do for a post!):

As a science fiction writer, these are the features I find attractive about “hyperspace” that incline me to favor it over other explanations for “fast” interstellar communication and travel:

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Hyperspace lets space still feel big. Wormholes/portals and instantaneous “jump drives” tend to make space feel small (though wormholes lend themselves nicely to space outside the wormhole network feeling big and to a feeling of sharp discontinuity between “known” or “civilized” space within the network and “unknown” or “wild” space where the network doesn’t reach). Start-anywhere go-anywhere jump drives without serious limitations have the additional issue that they’re more-or-less equivalent to teleporters, so they create the ultimate MAD setting where defending multiple fixed locations from a peer adversary is very difficult, and they minimize the strategic advantages of sustainable stationary banditry over unsustainable hyper-exploitive mobile banditry, and since the likely implications of that are very depressing I prefer to avoid it (except maybe if I was deliberately setting out to write a dystopia or explore the idea).

I want space to feel big in my writing, to give the reader some feeling of the vastness, grandeur, and inhuman scale of the universe. For my main science fiction setting, I think I’ll give hyperspace travel an effective “speed” of something like 5-10 c in Sol’s local neighborhood. That way interstellar journeys are more manageable than they’d be with journeys through our space, but journeys to other inhabited solar systems usually take at least a year or two (Sol to Alpha Centauri may be less than a year in hyperspace, but add in travel time to and from the Sol and Alpha Centauri hyper-limits, which is probably going to be at least a couple of months for each leg, and it’s probably about a year).

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Hyperspace feels more like the sort of thing that might plausibly be useable to almost hairless apes with near-future-ish technology. With warp drives and wormholes and jump drives and so on I get the niggling feeling that’s the sort of thing you should probably have to be on approximately the level of an Orion’s Arm Archialect to do. Real theoretical warp drive and wormhole proposals tend to involve stuff like exotic forms of matter and energy and very large amounts of energy. Hyperspace would be a natural phenomenon, so it’s easier to explain it in terms of people exploiting natural phenomena we just don’t know about now, no weirder than being able to travel faster than rowing would allow by building a sail to catch the wind.

You can say that there are some rare atoms that naturally have a structure that extends into hyperspace. With human senses and 2020s technology they just look like ordinary atoms of silicon, iron, etc., but with the right kind of machinery you can detect them, sift them out of the surrounding 3D atoms, and concentrate them. Once you’ve got enough of them, you can make them the core of a pair of transmitters that you can use to send and receive radio messages through hyperspace. With more energy, you can “push” on these structures and “push” those atoms into hyperspace, and then if those atoms are part of a larger solid object the rest of the object and anything touching it gets dragged along with them (with a certain size limit, perhaps related to mass being “pushed” and energy used, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally sending the whole Earth into hyperspace the first time you try this - that’d be one heck of an oops; maybe a later disproven small theoretical possibility of that happening would go down into the history books along with “before they exploded Trinity they were worried it might ignite the atmosphere”); thus you can send a whole ship into hyperspace instead of just information. When you want to leave hyperspace you can reverse the operation and “push” the ship back into our space.

That gives you a nice highly valuable “handwavium” that can be a hook for various plot and worldbuilding points, e.g. there’s not much obvious economic reason to colonize Mars IRL except maybe tourism (anything you could mine there you get more easily from near-Earth asteroids, and it’s too inhospitable to make much sense as a settler colony), but maybe there’s a huge mother lode of these hyperspace-touching atoms somewhere on Mars. These hyperspace-touching atoms would be especially valuable if the process of using them for communication or in hyperdrives “strained” these structures and at some predictable rate caused some of them to “snap,” causing the atoms to become ordinary 3D atoms of silicon or iron or uranium or whatever. Then there’d be a continuous need for (relatively) large amounts of new ones even in a steady-state economy; you couldn’t just keep recycling them and recycling them and just do a little mining to make up for recycling inefficiencies. This would also be an interesting limit on use of hyperspace; using hyperspace radio or doing a hyperjump involves destroying a small amount of a precious resource, so people wouldn’t want to do it frivolously. This might augment that sphere analogy limitation on hyperspace communication I talked about in my other post; even if a hyperspace radio message from Saturn to Earth got there a little ahead of a radio message through our space, you’d probably send a radio message through our space for anything that isn’t time-critical, because the message arriving ten minutes sooner usually just isn’t worth the predictable cost in “snapped” hyperspace-touching atoms.

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Hyperspace would be an environment, so you can do interesting things with it.

Since hyperspace offers a short-cut because it’s more compact than our space, I like to pull on the idea that it’s like our space but in a more compact state, so it’s similar to what our space looked like when the universe was younger and smaller. Going to hyperspace might be a little like time travelling back to a few tens or hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, before the first stars formed. The environment of hyperspace might be a little like the inside of a giant molecular cloud, but “warmer” and extremely impoverished in heavy elements. The gas density might be a few thousand to a few billion atoms per cubic centimeter (by comparison, sea level air is about 10^19 molecules per cubic centimeter while the interstellar medium averages around 1 atom per cubic centimeter). The gasses and plasmas in hyperspace would be almost pure hydrogen and helium. The cosmic microwave background temperature in hyperspace might be around 50 K; that’s warm in comparison to what it is in our space (around 3 K), and warm enough to probably be a big part of the reason hyperspace has no stars (present day star-forming giant molecular cloud regions have gas temperatures around 10-20 K), but by human standards it’s deeply cold; it’s upper atmosphere of Uranus temperature. With no stars, I’d guess hyperspace would be a place of more-or-less total darkness outside the range of any lights humans passing through might bring with them.

Alternately, if I want hyperspace to have a murky and mysterious quality and be a place where visibility isn’t good and sensors don’t work well (so a vibe a bit like B5 hyperspace), I could say the Big Bang nucleosynthesis era lasted longer in hyperspace and there produced a substantial amount of heavy elements, some of which then condensed into dust (probably more like smoke if it’s similar to interstellar dust in our space - nanometer to micrometer particles). This dust would probably be pretty insubstantial on human scale distances (again, if it’s like the interstellar medium matter in hyperspace would be about 99% mostly hydrogen and helium gas and plasma and 1% dust, and even a relatively “dense” hyperspace with billions of atoms per cm^3 would have less than a billionth the gas density of sea level air), but over AUs it would scatter light and that effect might add up. This would make hyperspace similar to a dark nebula.

If I want to take the “hyperspace is a scary place” further, I could add sources of energy that might further confuse sensors and add dangerous radiation and other dangers to the mix. Maybe hyperspace has a few large black holes or something, with energetic accretion disks and polar jets fed by all that relatively dense gas and adding turbulence to it. Or maybe spacetime in hyperspace is “lumpier” than spacetime in our space and hyperspace has weird “rivers” formed by something related to whatever force drives cosmic expansion and some of the gas/plasma gets caught in that and accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light and then slams into the low-velocity material in the “still” parts in places, creating lots of turbulence and various other interesting and scary things (powerful magnetic fields, radiation, locally intense heat, maybe some of these collision zones are even giant naturally occurring inertial confinement fusion reactors; maybe that’s where the heavy elements in the dust come from). Maybe hyperspace has a lot of cosmic strings; it makes a certain intuitive sense that, hyperspace being more compact than our space, its cosmic eggshell might be densely veined with cracks.

This gets into another interesting aspect; hyperspace might have something equivalent to terrain; hyperspace travel may be easier in some directions than others. And there’s lots of worldbuilding and plot hooks you could hang from that idea.

For example, let’s look at that idea of hyperspace having “rivers” formed of exotic spacetime structures and filled with gas/plasma streams moving at high fractions of the speed of light. If the edge of these “rivers” has a gradual enough velocity gradient and the plasma in the “rivers” is ionized, with enough skill a spacecraft pilot might be able to catch that “current” with a magsail and ride it, then when they’d gotten about as far as they needed to go they could leave the “river” and do magsail braking against low-velocity plasma in the “still” areas. Just gotta be careful to stay well away from the dangerous collision zones! This might be a huge part of the short-cut offered by hyperspace travel! It could be that distances across hyperspace are only modestly shorter than distances across our space (say, Alpha Centauri is 1 light year away in hyperspace), but the really big savings is you can catch one of these hyperspace “currents” and use it to get up to large fractions of c without expending any fuel. A set-up like that does raise some awkward questions about conservation of energy, but I could say something like “the hyperspace ‘rivers’ are areas where dark energy is being converted into kinetic energy, slightly slowing down the expansion of the universe in the process.” It’s not like we know much about how dark energy works, or even what it is, so for all we know that’s a thing that might happen under certain conditions.

Those collision zones would generate substantial radiation, including light, so unlike a calm hyperspace a turbulent hyperspace with energetic “currents” would probably have light. Don’t know how bright it would be; all that dust (made of heavy elements built up over the eons by inertial confinement fusion in collision zones, I like that idea!) would absorb a lot of light over cosmic distances, and stars are pretty bright but most of our space is pretty dark.

That set-up would make hyperspace travel kind of like sailing; there would be “currents” or “winds” you want to catch, and travel might be a lot faster along directions where the currents are favorable. Travel times in hyperspace might only loosely correlate with distance; Alpha Centauri might take longer to reach than Zeta Reticuli. There would also be hazards you’d need to avoid, e.g. the collision zones.

Maybe part of the explanation for the Fermi Paradox might be that Earth is in the middle of a big “still” part of hyperspace; few ships went here because we’re in the middle of a cosmic doldrums that takes years to crawl across.

With a set-up like this, hyperspace may have “weather” that influences interstellar commerce, and “climate change” on historical timescales that influences the trajectories of interstellar societies. Ages when hyperspace is particularly turbulent might cause Dark Ages as hyperspace travel becomes very dangerous. Ages when hyperspace becomes unusually calm might also cause Dark Ages as there are no fast hyperspace “currents” to ride and hyperspace travel becomes relatively slow. In one age hyperspace “currents” may be arranged such that a world is isolated; a few thousand years later the hyperspace “currents” might have shifted and that previously isolated world might be much more accessible and back in the mainstream of interstellar civilization.

One wrinkle: a turbulent, energetic, opaque hyperspace such as this probably wouldn’t be good for sending radio signals across. Maybe the universe actually has multiple “basement” levels, hyperspace is just the one that’s “closest” to our “living room” level and the only one that’s “close” enough that ships can travel to and from it, but there’s a clearer layer that’s “farther away” but still “close” enough that you can send radio signals through it, and that “deeper” clear layer is the one used for interstellar communication. Bonus idea I like: the deep clear layer is even more compact than hyperspace (by orders of magnitude) so it’s overall a much better short-cut in every way except being “too far away” to send ships through it, so finding a way to send ships through it is a huge potential breakthrough that tantalizes generations of scientists and engineers who so far have not managed to figure out a way to do it.

Really, on that note, I like the idea that the universe is analogous to an onion with many “layers,” and hyperspace and the deep clear layer are just the layers that are most easily accessible from our space. There are a lot of “basements” below the deep clear layer, and generally as you get farther “down” the “basements” get smaller, denser, and hotter; going “down” is a little like time travelling to eras closer and closer to the Big Bang (though this isn’t a completely reliable rule - the deep clear layer is smaller than hyperspace and perhaps warmer, but seems to be a lot emptier; maybe most of its matter has been sucked into black holes?). Maybe the whole thing is a bit timey wimey wibbly wobbly and if you go “down” far enough you eventually hit what 2020s science knows as the moment of the Big Bang. As well as “basements” there are also “attics,” but they’re less accessible because going “up” is harder than going “down.” If going “down” into the basements is a little like time travelling to the early universe, going “up” into the attics is a little like time travelling to the deep future, to places that look kind of like what our space may look like in the deep future black hole era (assuming the Big Rip doesn’t destroy our universe before that deep future proton decay story has time to play out). The “attics” are vast, empty, and deeply cold; cosmic microwave background temperatures a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero and precious little else to generate energy, maybe one atom in every cubic kilometer of space. They probably expanded too quickly for stars to ever form there. The total number of layers might be large; maybe hundreds or thousands, maybe billions, maybe a number so big it would need to be expressed in scientific notation. I like this idea because it makes hyperspace feel less implausibly convenient for humans; we’re just taking advantage of a particularly convenient part of a big macrostructure that’s mostly inaccessible to us.

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Hyperspace is a natural phenomenon, so it probably isn’t going to be neatly quarantined to just being a thing humans can use for communication and travel. Hyperspace-related phenomena are going to show up in nature, and this offers a neat explanation for any exotic soft SF-ish natural phenomena you may be interested in incorporating into your setting.

Hyperspace (and other “basements” of our universe) also gives you a built-in parsimonious explanation for any other bits of soft SF technology your setting might feature. Want your setting to have e.g. Star Trek style forcefields? You can say they work through interaction with one of the “basement” layers of the universe.

On that note, I have an idea for a more hard SF version of the Babylon 5 “going beyond the Rim” thing or Stargate ascension, based on the “onion universe” concept I described above, which might serve as a partial explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Maybe some “layers” of the “onion” are “superhabitable” to advanced machine intelligences (though not to primitive flesh and blood beings like us). You know the aestivation hypothesis? If advanced machine intelligences could move to an “attic” they wouldn’t have to wait billions of years for our space to cool down; the cosmic microwave background temperatures in many of the “attics” would already be some tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Maybe they could move to a nice big cold “attic” and live there and “mine” a nice compact “basement” that is rich in matter and energy, getting the best of both worlds. Most of these “attics” and “basements” would be completely inaccessible to humans, but beings with better technology and more resources might be able to access many more of them (or maybe even get beyond the “onion” and search the entire multiverse for universes with conditions more to their liking). So the universe’s most powerful and most enduring civilizations might usually leave our space and move to another “layer” or universe that has conditions more ideal for them, and thus be mostly undetectable to us.

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See: the concept of hyperspace is loaded with potential plot and worldbuilding hooks if you use a little imagination, and I like that!

#worldbuilding #worldbuilding ideas #my writing

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thebakingqueen5 · 3 years

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KW 2021: Role Swap

Day 4 for Kataang Week 2021 hosted by @kataang-week with the prompt Role Swap!

This is taken more in a figurative sense- rather than Katara being the Avatar and Aang her teacher, I wanted to shift their relationship dynamics and just add some pregnancy fluff of course, so enjoy!

Links: FF.net | AO3

Summary: Another year, another summer, another week of prompts celebrating our favorite couple. Kataang Week 2021 Day 4: Role Swap. Expansion upon the Yin/Yang oneshot from KVB 2021. During Katara’s first pregnancy, an interesting change in dynamics occurs.

Word Count: 2.6K

Aang let out a groan as a beam of sunlight shone through the glass window directly onto his face, promptly waking the airbender up. He rubbed his groggy eyes, yawning as his senses awakened, and rolled over onto his side, arms expecting to find his wife’s form peacefully resting next to him.

“That’s weird,” he frowned. Aang patted the empty space again, reaching farther across the bed this time. Nothing.

Aang was naturally quite an early riser, far more so than Katara, and it had become routine for them to cuddle for an hour or two in the mornings before properly getting ready for the day. So where was she?

With a short blast of air from his hands, Aang propelled himself upright so that he was standing on the hard, cold, stone floor of the Air Temple. He closed his eyes in concentration, blocking out all other sounds and sights to focus on the vibrations under his feet.

Aang muttered to himself, eyebrows knitted, “She’s not on this floor… not in the temple at all actually, so where- the spring? What’s she doing there so early?”

Wanting to know what his dear wife was up to, the airbender quickly grabbed some blankets from the cupboard (early mornings on the island tended to be quite chilly) as well as some moon peaches from the kitchen and made his way through the temple corridors until he was standing outside, his natural element instantly surrounding him with a refreshing cool breeze.

“Ah,” Aang sighed, taking a deep breath. He basked in the sun’s rays for a few moments, eyes closed as the sounds of birds chirping and the distant crashing of waves onto the shore filled his ears and relaxed his senses.

Then, remembering why he came out in the first place, the airbender began trekking uphill to the west side of the island, resuming his search for Katara.

In their early days of exploring, the waterbender had discovered a secluded stream hidden in the forest that cascaded into the sea if you followed it far enough. It also had a few natural hot springs along it, and it had quickly become one of Katara’s favorite spots not only to bend and spar, but to also just unwind and relax.

“Kataraaaaa,” Aang called out, pushing away the vines that covered the entrance to her little nook. “Where’d you go, sweetie?” He could hear the burbling of the water as it flowed over the rocks under its surface as well as the soft croaks of the frogs who called it home. He had to be getting close.

“Over here, Aang!”

The airbender’s head perked up in the direction of her voice and he grinned widely when he saw her, pleasantly surprised.

Katara’s eyes were still closed, her features serene from her seat on top of a round, flat boulder overlooking a wider part of the stream. She had obviously been meditating, but that wasn’t quite what shocked Aang the most.

Instead of her traditional fur-lined Water Tribe garb, she was wearing Air Nomad robes in warmer shades of yellow, orange, and dark red like the fall leaves. Her swollen belly poked out from under the loose layers of fabric, and she had never looked so beautiful to Aang (except maybe on their wedding day).

“Hey, Tara,” the airbender murmured, walking up to her. He gave her a hug from behind and pressed a kiss to her temple, one of his hands interlocking with hers around the middle of her stomach while the other rested on top of her bump.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Quite early to be all the way out here, no?”

Katara slowly fluttered her eyelids open, the corners of her mouth turning up as she leaned back against him. “Well, your child wouldn’t stop kicking me and woke me up, so I figured we’d try and relax for some time.”

Aang pouted. “Why is she always my child when she’s bothering her amazing and beautiful mom?”

“Because he gets it from his dad,” she deadpanned in response.

“Meanie.” Aang gave her a look and stuck his tongue out at her, causing them both to dissolve into laughter.

“Meditating isn’t usually your thing, nor are those,” he pointed out as he gestured to her clothing, an eyebrow quirked. “What brought this on?”

Katara blushed, looking away with a shy smile. “Well, I thought I’d take a page out of your book. Meditating always works for you, so I just figured why not try it? And these I’ve actually been sewing together for the last week or so. I found a pattern in one of the crates we brought over from the Southern Air Temple, and they’re a lot looser and comfier than my normal clothes. I, um, I hope that’s okay?”

“More than okay. The fact that you even cared enough to use the pattern, not to mention how you took my breath away- it’s concerning as an airbender, you know,” Aang grinned as Katara giggled at the last bit.

Suddenly, a frigid gust swept by them, cooling the already chilly morning air and causing the waterbender to shiver as she scooted closer to Aang, seeking his natural body heat.

“Spirits, it’s cold,” she muttered, rubbing her hands up and down the sides of her torso. “I’ve been out of the South Pole too long.”

Aang quickly trotted over to the entrance of the little den where he had set down the blankets and fruits he brought. “I have just the thing.”

He quickly grabbed two of them, one made of polar leopard skins from the Southern Water Tribe and another he had managed to sew using Appa’s shedded fur last spring, and snugly wrapped them around Katara, handing her a moon peach as well as her body warmed back up.

“You really didn’t have to, Aang,” she mumbled, biting into her moon peach and humming contentedly when she tasted its sweetness.

Fruit still in hand, she gave him a slightly awkward side embrace, enveloping him in the blankets with her while he returned the hug and kissed the top of her head, as well as her growing belly.

“Of course I did,” he said looking down at her. “You always work yourself to the bone doing stuff for everyone else, Katara. It’s high time you let someone do the same for you. Especially when you’re carrying such precious cargo.”

Katara rolled her eyes, the pink tint in her cheeks and upturned corners of her mouth giving her true thoughts away.

“Quite the role swap today, eh?” she teased. “Me in airbender robes and meditating while you start to mother everyone?”

“Not everyone,” Aang chuckled. “Just you. You take care of our baby, so I take care of you. Simple as that.”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Katara sighed. “Can we stay here for a bit?” she asked, leaning into the airbender a little more. “This is nice.”

“It would be my pleasure,” the airbender responded.

The couple did, in fact, end up spending the entire morning at the secluded creek simply relaxing, meditating, and enjoying each other’s company. It wasn’t until Katara’s stomach growled that Aang insisted they head back (“You’re eating for two now, sweetie, c’mon- I’ll even make you some mini fruit pies.”) and have a proper breakfast.

Time quickly flew, and the sun made its way across the cloud-streaked sky as the minutes turned to hours and the afternoon was spent taking a stroll across the island grounds. The training arena and meditation pavilion had been coming along quite nicely, and soon some Acolytes would be able to move in from the other temples, Aang remarked at some point.

Alas, eventually duties called, and by dinner time, the airbender was holed up in his office, back hunched over a stack of documents illuminated by a small candle on his desk.

Though he certainly didn't regret the day's adventures, they had put him back significantly. The council had been assigning more paperwork lately with even tighter deadlines in preparation for the unveiling of new city infrastructure, like the ferry to the island, and it was driving Aang crazy. He barely got any time away from his Avatar duties as it was, and this just added to the pressure.

Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring!

Aang snapped out of his thoughts, startled by the chimes of the bell tower on the mainland and quickly counted how many he heard.

“12?! ” he thought to himself. “ How is it already midnight? I’m barely halfway through! ”

The airbender groaned, dropping his head onto the desk with a loud thump. All he wanted was to be next to his wife in their bed right now, and he couldn't even have that!

As if telepathically summoned by that last thought, Aang suddenly felt her soft hands on his shoulders, massaging them as they both sighed softly.

"You need a break," she whispered as she alleviated some of the stress held in his back. "You're so tense."

"Believe me, I know," the airbender muttered. "I wish I could just leave this all and take a break from work already."

"Well, why don't you?"

Aang turned his head to look at her as if she had just grown a third arm. "I'm the Avatar. I can't. This needs to be done."

She rolled her eyes, gaze still focused on kneading the knots in his shoulder blades. "Please, the world managed to go an entire century without the Avatar. I'm sure the council members can stand to wait a day without some lousy paperwork."

"But-"

"No buts," Katara harrumphed. "You're the Avatar! You're the one fighting for workers to have shorter work weeks and less hours so that they can be home with their families! Why not apply the same to yourself?"

Aang frowned. She did have a point. Technically speaking, he could easily skive off the paperwork and the council wouldn't be able to do anything. After all, he was the Avatar. Avatar Kuruk certainly had no problem with it (though that was a frequent point of contention between him and the other Avatars).

"People are relying on me to get this done, Tara. I can't disappoint them."

Abruptly stopping her movements on his back, Katara grabbed the documents and held them out of reach of the airbender.

"I'm going to tell you exactly what's going to happen now,” she huffed. “You are going to forget about these documents tonight. Tomorrow, if and when the council asks, you are going to tell them that everyone is taking the next week off because of how overworked they are. But for right now, you are coming with me for some nice, relaxing midnight waterbending. No sparring, just an orb of water back and forth.”

Aang opened his mouth to argue but faltered, seeing the determined look on Katara’s face. Instead, he just shook his head and chuckled.

“My wife, the epitome of responsibility and good work ethic, is not only encouraging, but actively telling me to blow off work and waterbend with her? Who are you and what have you done with Katara?”

The waterbender blushed, but the fire in her eyes did not die down one bit. “Maybe it’s this baby, maybe it’s the full moon, but you were the one who showed me how to have fun when I needed it, Aang. Now it’s my turn to return the favor.”

Aang sighed and set down his pen as he stood up.

“Lead the way.”

Katara eagerly took his outstretched arm and pulled him in the direction of the cove. On the southern tip of the island, surrounded by rocky cliffs on either side, there was a small lagoon, heated by the same source as that of the hot springs along the stream they had visited earlier. As a result, the water was comfortably warm all year round, and was incredibly effective for relaxing the mind, body, and soul.

The two arrived in mere minutes and the heat immediately had its desired effect. Tension evaporated away like water on hot coals as the two entered the steam and began to strip into their waterbending clothes, Katara in her bindings, slightly modified to accommodate her growing bump, and Aang in his undergarments.

The full moon reflected brightly off the surface of the water, creating an almost halo-like effect around the two benders as they entered the shallow end and began passing around a ball of water.

They easily settled into a consistent rhythm, moving back and forth in time with the ocean tide pushing and pulling around their feet. It was almost hypnotic in a way, and the monotonous motion calmed Aang’s erratic thoughts.

His head now far clearer, the airbender flicked his wrist, splashing a bit of water in Katara’s face.

“Did you just-” she asked in shock

He gave her a cheesy grin. “Maybe.”

“Oh, it is on.”

Instead of passing the ball of water back to Aang, Katara held it over his head, smiling devilishly.

“You wouldn’t,” Aang gasped.

“Wouldn’t I?” she smirked.

Without another word, Katara released her hold, and the sphere splashed down onto Aang, leaving the airbender soaked and spluttering.

“Two can play at that game.”

Aang swept his hands from side to side in a large motion that caused the water around Katara to rise higher and higher, soaking her from the hips down.

The waterbender began to form her counter to it, a large wave building behind Aang out of his line of sight, without realizing that the water around her had suddenly receded as he had the same idea.

The two simultaneously released their grips, and their waves swept over both of them, submerging them for all of a few seconds before the water settled and they came up for air. They were left sitting on their butts, completely soaked with their knees and torso mostly submerged, and burst into laughter.

“So much for some peaceful waterbending,” Katara chuckled.

“It may not have been peaceful, but it was exactly what I needed,” the airbender smiled. “Thank you, sweetie.”

“Of course,” she yawned, making Aang yawn as well.

“Looks like it’s time for bed,” he murmured, eyes bleary.

“It’s a warm night,” Katara said as she stood up. “Maybe we could sleep out here?”

Aang quickly strode through the water onto shore, Katara right behind him, and turned towards her, kissing her forehead.

“Cuddling and sleeping under the stars with my beautiful wife? Sounds absolutely perfect. Let me just get some pillows from the temple.”

“Oh, no, Aang, you’re already tired and worked so much today, you don’t have to do that-”

“Ah,” he interrupted. “My job to take care of you. Besides, the jog will help me sleep faster,” he winked, running off towards the spire.

Within a few minutes, he had gone and returned, pillows and blankets in tow, and the two quickly set up a little sleeping area on the beach so that they could finally settle down for the night.

“Ah,” Aang sighed as the two lay down on their sides and began to close their eyes. “The council might be mad, but you know what? Screw it, I’d take waterbending with you over boring paperwork any day."

“Well, I should hope so. I’d like to think I’m more exciting than paperwork,” she smiled, giving him a soft nudge. “You know, it’s not every day we get a whole day like this and it means a lot. You mean a lot. I love you, Aang. I hope you know that.”

“I do,” he smiled and leaned down to press a kiss to her stomach. “I love you too, Katara. You and our precious baby. Sweet dreams, love.”

“Sweet dreams.”

#kataang week #kataang week 2021 #kataangtag #kataang #aang x katara #midnight waterbending #aang #katara #pregnancy fluff #bc yes #4 am ramblings #wrote this way later than i should've #atla fanfiction

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 2 years

Video

youtube

Spelunking on the moon: New study explores lunar pits and caves The moon may be a mostly uniform expanse of gray, but if you look closely, you can still find a few nooks and crannies in its surface, from deep trenches to pits and maybe even caves. Now, researchers at CU Boulder have set out to explore what the environment might be like inside some of these shadowy features—many of which are too dark to see clearly from orbit. The team’s preliminary results suggest that pits and caves on the moon showcase remarkably stable conditions. They don’t seem to experience the wild swings in temperature that are common at the moon’s surface, said Andrew Wilcoski, a graduate student in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at CU Boulder. He will present the group’s initial findings Friday at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in New Orleans. “If we’re hoping to send people into these caves in the decades ahead, we want to know what they should expect down there,” said Wilcoski, a co-author of the new research. The take-home message: What is it like to go spelunking on the moon? Future lunar explorers may want to pay attention. Pits and caves, Wilcoski explained, are potentially ideal places for the space colonies of the future. Their walls and crevices are naturally homey and might protect humans from the sun’s dangerous radiation. Some scientists have also wondered if lunar pits and caves could be rich in natural resources that astronauts covet. That includes ice, which explorers could mine to collect water for drinking, showers and even rocket fuel. To find out for sure, Wilcoski and planetary scientist Paul Hayne drew on computer simulations to try to recreate the conditions below the moon’s surface. Their initial findings present a mixed bag: The stable environments of lunar pits and caves could help astronauts weather some of the moon’s worst extremes. Those same conditions, however, may make them less-than-perfect spots to go looking for water. “They’re attractive options for establishing a long-term human presence on the moon,” said Hayne, assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU Boulder. Pockmarked moon Hayne added that no one knows how many pits and caves might be hiding on the moon. One scientific team that went searching for them in 2014 found more than 200. Many looked like round holes punched into the lunar surface, and they ranged from about a half a mile wide to the size of a London double-decker bus. Scientists are excited about their potential in part because the moon itself is such an extreme environment. “As you get close to the equator, temperatures can reach more than 100 degrees Celsius during the day on the surface, and it will get down to 170 degrees Celsius below zero at night,” Wilcoski said. The researchers developed simulations to track the temperatures in hypothetical lunar pits and caves of various shapes and sizes as the sun rose and set over the moon. They found that how these formations are oriented matters. If a cave’s mouth points directly at the rising sun, for example, it will get a lot warmer than if it points away. Just like caves on Earth, caves on the moon seemed to sustain relatively balmy environments. Most of the team’s simulated caves hosted temperatures of about minus 120 to minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 184 to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit) throughout an entire lunar day. Those aren’t great conditions for water frozen into ice, Wilcoski said. Previous research by Hayne and other scientists has shown that water ice may have accumulated over billions of years in certain sites on the moon that researchers call “cold traps.” But, based on results from the new simulations, many lunar pits and caves are probably too warm to harbor similar treasure troves. In other words, go somewhere else to fill up your Nalgene. “One intriguing possibility would be to establish a protected base station inside a lunar pit or cave near one of the polar craters containing water ice,” Hayne said. “Astronauts could then venture out when conditions were right in order to collect ice-rich soil.” VIDEO....Day in the Life of a Moon Cave -- This simulation shows how temperatures could change in a hypothetical pit and cave on the moon over the course of a single lunar day.

#space #science #Astronomy #physics

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 2 years

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Speak No Evil (Part 50) - Story 2

Her bed is warmer with TyLee for company. The girl runs her fingers through Azula's locks. She doesn't have her clay not parchment so she lets TyLee babble on and on about whatever is on her mind.

Mostly it is a while lot of small talk. Azula did want particularly mind, it is rather soothing to speak of more benign things for a change. Thinks that don't involve uncomfortable introspection and tends admission of her feelings.

Azula massages TyLee's shoulders as the girl talks on. "And the second glacier we explored was even more magnificent, we were guided by polar bear dogs and then afterwards I got to go penguin sledding!"

'Penguins sledding?' She mouths .

"It's a a lot of fun!" TyLee claps her hands together. "Maybe one day I can take you!"

She tries to picture herself on the back of a penguin, she isn't exactly sure how it would work. She rests her head on TyLee's shoulder and closest her eyes.

Though it has been quite some time, Azula still finds it fairly hard to believe that she isn't alone anymore. Chikao is adamant that the feels ng won't last, she'll get used to having love and company. He tells her that she should start branching out and talking to more people. That it would be healthy for her; that communication will come easier with every person she gives a chance to.

But she isn't particularly sure where to start. Zuzu had suggested talking to the Avatar and his friends but she finds them only tolerable at the nest of times. And if she is being honest with herself she can't look at Katara without a feeling of heaviness on her wrists and vague sense of discomfort. Sometimes, when the circumstances are exactly incorrect, it is hard to look at Zuzu.

She needs to go somewhere new, new but familiar with people she doesn't know.

TyLee brushes her bangs out of her face, "what are you thinking about, Azula?"

'A lot' She mouths.

"Tell me in the morning?"

Azula nods. She kisses the soft spot of TyLee's neck. Slides her hand around the woman's waist and presses herforead to hers. It is easier that she remembers to be affectionate with her.

Perhaps it is finally starting to come naturally to be a more loving person.

.oOo.

'I want to go back to Ember Island.' TyLee reads the parchment twice over.

"Miss Seicho?"

'I suppose that that's one reason.'

TyLee quirks a brow. "Is it a big reason or the main reason."

'The main one, I suppose.'

"Well what are you going to do when you get there?" TyLee plucks a strand of grass and twirls it between her fingers.

Azula smiles, 'it's a surprise.'

She has a pretty smile. The warmth of it is accentuated by the rising sun. "Hopefully a nice surprise."

'It will be. Seicho liked collecting shells and glass beads. We could do that. We could learn to swim. It would be nice to practicing my katas on the beach.'

"You don't know how to swim?"

'Not well.' Azula confesses. 'I have a few other ideas in mind. We're going to redecorate my family's vacation home. I'll set up a potter studio there…'

It is reassuring to see Azula making plans again. And more than that, to see her looking so enthusiastic. She thinks that she should have suggested goal setting from the start. Azula is infinitely more content when she has something to keep her occupied. Something that she finds worthwhile.

'And it will be easier for me to communicate. There is sand everywhere, I just need to bring a stick. I was going to get a special stick made, a writing stick. I already have a design sketched.' She rustles through her stack of parchment and hands her a sheet that has been folded several times over

Upon unfolding it she is greeted by an image of what looks like a walking cane, although the edge is a little sharper. At least it is pointed. It is topped by a dragon labeled, 'sapphire'. Along the cane itself--labeled 'gold'--are elegant etchings. Most of them are Fire Nation insignias, the fire element insignia, and a few royal seals. Every couple of inches, Azula has drawn a crystal. Most if them are sapphires and blue diamonds.

"That's pretty, Azula."

She smiles again and takes the parchment back, folding it up and tucking it into her pocket.

"Maybe we can try to get your voice back again before we go. Now that you're in better shape."

Azula shakes her head. 'It's gone TyLee. Trust me, you didn't hear what the spirit said. You didn't feel the finality.' her scrawl slows. 'It's alright. Chikao and I have been talking about that too.'

"And what did you, uh, conclude?"

Azula gazes at the pond for a moment before replying. 'i think that it's easier for me to write what I want to say. It's easier to tell people how I feel. I suppose it's more difficult for council meetings and wartime communication but…" she flips the page. She hesitates for a moment. "Chikao thinks that it would be better if I stayed away from both."

"Do you agree?"

Another hesitation.

But it is followed with a nod. 'I've been better since getting away from the war. There's less stress. Less pressure. I...I needed a break. Perhaps I'll go back to it one day. But for now, there's something new that I'd like to try.'

"That's wonderful, Azula!" She grabs her hands. "I think this will be really nice for you. For both of us. I love Ember Island, it's so pretty and relaxing." Spirits know that Azula could do really well in a place where things move with a languid charm. “Does Seicho know that you’re coming.”

‘It’s going to be a surprise.’ Azula replies. Hopefully a pleasant one.

“This is really exciting.” TyLee claps her hands together.

Exciting and daunting. Azula isn’t particularly fond of change. Though it is rather different when she is the one who initiates it. TyLee throws herself into her arms. She supposes that if it goes wrong she won’t be alone this time and that has to count for something or another.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #Azula #TyLee #TyZula #Fanfiction

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desnayy · 3 years

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Info about a planet that I once made under the readmore!

Nielea is considered a dwarf planet, smaller than all it’s neighboring planets. Despite this, Nielea has two moons orbiting it, both having their own moon cycle. This causes the tides of the freezing ocean to be rather erratic. The only reason Nielea can hold life even as far from its sun as it is, is because the sun is much larger than Earth’s, close to the end of its lifecycle. A year on Nielea lasts about 2 Earth years.

Many comparisons between the singular unnamed continent on Nielea and many countries in the Arctic circle of Earth have been made, especially considering how Nielea has a quarter of its year with the midnight sun phenomenon, and another quarter of the year with polar night. Studies of the planet from above have revealed that there are many small islands, but due to the unpredictability of the tides and the many icebergs, it is considered to be too dangerous to venture out into the ocean at this time.

The planet is largely permafrost with many sparsely forested mountains and a large freezing ocean surrounding the one large continent and the many small islands around it. Some lakes on the continent are hot springs, with all the settlements on the planet built around the springs, using them as heating, as only a handful are safe for use while the others are hot enough to instantly boil anything that enters them. The lakes that aren’t hot springs are freshwater lakes, and are often located close to the hot springs. The freshwater lakes are notoriously cold, and can cause almost instant hypothermia if one were to enter it, but the lakes are often drawn from for drinking water, bathing water, etc.

In terms of seasons, there really are none. The biggest difference is that for a couple of months in the middle of the year, the weather is slightly warmer than normal, which is considered a rainy season as it does rain quite a bit. For the rest of the year, most precipitation is snow or hail, and near the end of the year there can be large and dangerous blizzards.

Most wildlife are hardy creatures to survive the cold weather, and although no expeditions have been made to explore the ocean, there have been occasional sightings of things that could be comparable to whales. Within the freshwater lakes of the continent are a breed of fish that bear a very vague resemblance to cod, and are colloquially known as Nielea cod. On land, there is a species of ungulates that appear to resemble the Earth moose, just on a significantly smaller scale much like the Earth deer, and are colored a pale brown. The so-called Nielea moose are omnivores, and will not hesitate to attack if there is even a slight threat. There is also a rather large species of bear-like herbivores that the Nielea locals farm for meat and fur, as the meat is known to taste very delicious, similarities being drawn to pork, while the fur is used in creating warm and soft fabric. It is helpful that this species reproduces and grows quite quickly, and gives birth to many young. There is also a type of bird that appears to be a mix of a penguin and a flamingo, flightless but quick in the water, the meat of which is rather stringy and not very tasty.

Due to the land being mostly permafrost as well as the freezing temperatures, it is difficult to farm crops, with most produce being exported from other planets. Recently though, there have been attempts at making greenhouses for certain produce, using the geothermal water to heat the greenhouses much like they do for the towns. There is a type of sweet berry that grows in the scant few warm months, and is a basis for most Nielean sweets.

Thermis, as the largest settlement on the dwarf planet, is the only one with a space port of any kind, though it is much smaller than most, and can only hold a few ships at a time. The settlement itself has most of the planet’s residents living in it, requiring many apartment style buildings, as those are easier to heat with geothermal compared to singular houses, less strain on the system. As the settlement is built around the largest hot spring on the planet, there has been a big building built around the hot spring itself, and has become one of the largest tourist spots on the planet, aside from the ski resort in the mountains.

In the terms of culture, Nieleans place a large emphasis on family and community togetherness. This is largely because of the previously dwindling human population from before they were able to acclimatize to the colder weather compared to the other species who helped settle the planet. It’s quite common for floor neighbors to help raise any children, resulting in large extended non-related families. Gatherings for meals are also quite common between floor neighbors. It is considered quite suspicious if someone refuses to participate for any reason. Fully human children are quite rare, as even though the humans are getting better at dealing with the low temperatures, it's considered better for children to be born as hybrids with the more cold adapted species.

In terms of education, in Thermis there is one of each school, elementary/middle/high, while smaller settlements will typically have one building for all three. Anyone seeking higher education will either have to travel off planet, which not many do thanks to high cost, or do online learning. There has been talks of building a small college in Thermis, but so far, this has just been talks.

Some notable dishes of the Nielean cuisine are a dumpling shaped like fish filled with a jam made from Nielea sweet berries and the meat of the Nielea cod, bread made of greenhouse grown rye that is baked underground near the hot springs for a whole day, a type of snow candy made with heated sweet berry jam, and another type of sweet berry candy, this time taking the form similar to that of Earth rock candy.

#long post #worldbuilding #i suppose #magic space

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